I have been connected to the estate planning world in my practice for over 20 years, and fully immersed for the past 3. Despite this being my area of practice, the saying that the cobbler’s children have no shoes is also very true in my case. I did have the basics done – but my will left everything to my mother (and not my husband) and named her as my attorney-in-fact for medical and financial decisions, because I last updated my documents before my marriage, which was in 2010. My documents were also problematic because my mother died in 2021. This issue is further complicated by the fact that my husband had nothing done – he did not have any durable powers of attorney or estate planning completed. Even though I have known this for years, I just didn’t get the basics done – just like thousands of people across the nation.
In my side of the practice, I handle the going to court stuff – and I KNOW first-hand how not having your documents done creates a multitude of time-consuming and expensive problems. This came to the forefront for my family on July 7, 2023 when my husband ended up in the emergency room and had to undergo a triple by-pass at age 45. Never in my dreams would I have expected this to occur – we are young (relatively!) – and it never occurred to me, despite what I do for a living, that we would be in the position to need our estate planning done immediately. Now, I am beyond lucky to do what I do and to practice with an amazing partner, Polly, and our wonderful team. With very little turnaround time, we were able to get Ryan’s documents done and signed right before his surgery. If I was not in the position I am in, our (my!) procrastination would have cost my husband and I thousands of dollars more than the estate planning itself because of the emergent nature of what we needed. If we had not been able to get things done and something bad had happened, I would have been looking at having to probate my husband’s estate, and setting up a conservatorship for my son, because he would have received assets because my husband didn’t have a will. It would have been a mess and the last thing I would have wanted to deal with, while I was mourning the loss of my husband. I see so many people having to do this very thing and it can be devastating.
There are many reasons people wait – age (I’m too young!), fear of death (I don’t want to think about it), not enough assets, belief that there won’t be any disagreements, estate planning is expensive, it’s too much trouble – but none of these will be of any comfort when you are looking at trying to fix the lack of estate planning when it is too late. If you make an appointment with our firm, you want to have that meeting with Polly or Maureen, because that means you are tackling the issue of your assets well in advance, which is the best way to proceed. This doesn’t necessarily mean you won’t ever see me – but we want that to be a function of doing everything right, as opposed to doing everything wrong, or doing nothing at all.
When I was sitting at the hospital, worried about my husband, worried about my son, worried about in-laws – the last thing I needed to be worrying about was our estate planning documents. Because, however, of my misconception, I did have to worry about it when I was already under a lot of stress and pressure. We were able to solve the problem, but we should have been proactive and not reactive, and I urge you to do the same.
